You’ll probably be aware that Santa Claus is on his way but did you know that TED Talks recently clocked up their 1 billionth view (yes, 1,000,000,000!). To celebrate, TED asked some of their amazing speakers to choose their top 10 TED Talks (have a look at Phillipe Starck’s, Hans Rosling’s and Bill Gates’ choices) and we’ve been inspired to do something similar.

So we wanted to know what the Kraków community’s favourite TED Talks are. What has moved, touched or inspired you? Which one have you insisted your friends watch? Or which ones you've watched over and over again and yet you still get something new out of it every time. It turned out that there were many!
The first talk we watched was Vijay Kumar’s „Robots that fly... and cooperate” which was chosen by Ewa Spohn, TEDxKraków’s curator. She chose this film because, as she explained, she’s an engineer herself and was amazed by the advances made in the design of flying robots and the possibilities they offer, e.g. for mapping buildings where in may be hazardous for people to enter. The last part of the talk featured an unforgettable musical performance by the robots!

The next TED Talk (Rachel Botsman „The case collaborative consumption”) was chosen by Alicja Marcinek and it touches on the question of a how we can consume together and the economics of swapping things we don’t need for things we do. Rachel showed a number of internet platforms that allow for this kind of swapping to be done easily and safely. One of the participants of this festive TEDxKrakówCinema, Richard Lucas, proposed creating a similar platform for Kraków and asked anyone interested in working with him to do this to get in touch. We wait impatiently to see the results of this work!

The meeting was wrapped up with Dan Gilbert’s „The suprising science of happiness” which was nominated by Maciek Szafraniec, another member of the TEDxKraków team. Dan’s humerous explanation of how we synthesise happiness and its value in our day-to-day life. The talk sparked a discussion about happiness and its role in our lives. After this final talk, we moved downstairs to the bar where the discussion carried on in an (even) more casual atmosphere.